Hoekstra ad riles Republicans, too

Pete Hoekstra’s campaign knew its edgy Super Bowl ad would agitate Democrats. What they didn’t expect was the fierce public backlash from members of their own party.

The debut commercial in the Michigan Senate campaign, featuring a young Asian female riding a bicycle through rice paddy fields and speaking broken English, is roiling the Republican ranks and pitting high-profile consultants against one another.

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The message of the ad — that China is a continuing threat to American job creation — isn’t as much of an issue as the fact that Hoekstra’s camp seized on stereotypes to drive home its point.

“Thank you, Michigan Sen. Debbie ‘Spend-it-now,’” a smiling Asian woman says to kick off the spot against second-term Democrat Sen. Debbie Stabenow. “Debbie spends so much American money. You borrow more and more from us. Your economy get very weak. Ours get very good. We take your jobs,” the woman says in the ad. The commercial’s imagery produces a knee-jerk objection among critics: The smash of a gong, the straw pointed hat dangling from the woman’s neck and her broken English all smack of xenophobia, they say.

Michigan-based GOP consultant Nick DeLeeuw aired his grievances on Facebook: “Stabenow has got to go. But shame on Pete Hoekstra for that appalling new advertisement. Racism and xenophobia aren’t any way to get things done.”

Hoekstra was far from apologetic Monday — and even declared his excitement that the ad had stirred up such controversy. “It hits Debbie smack dab between the eyes where she is vulnerable,” he said Monday on a previously scheduled conference call with reporters.

“We knew we were taking an aggressive approach on this. I’m excited … it has jump-started the debate,” he said.

Hoekstra’s camp says it was aware of the risk involved in launching such a provocative broadside, especially on a night when millions of eyeballs were trained on commercials. Despite the outcry, Hoekstra’s team believes their $150,000 investment in the ad is already paying dividends. A campaign adviser told POLITICO that the former congressman has raised twice as much money online in the first week of February alone than he raised in all of January. As of Monday evening, the clip had received more than 160,000 YouTube hits and thousands of potential supporters had hit the website to sign up for campaign updates.

“We knew that it would dominate the media this week, spur online fundraising and lead the discussion toward Debbie Stabenow’s spending policies. We certainly aren’t surprised that liberals and supporters of other candidates are attacking it,” said an adviser aligned with the Hoekstra campaign.

Not everyone was offended by the ad — some prominent Republicans rushed to Hoekstra’s defense Monday.